Public Act 4, which allows appointment of an emergency manager to right a community’s finances, will be tested by voters on the Nov. 6 ballot.

It should be approved.The law was signed by Gov. Rick Snyder in 2011 and it expanded the powers of emergency managers, who were previously known as emergency financial managers and worked under a law called Public Act 72.

Public Act 4 establishes criteria to assess the financial condition of local government units, including school districts. It authorizes the governor to appoint an emergency manager upon the state finding a financial emergency and allows the EM to act in place of local officials. It requires the EM to develop financial and operating plans that could include termination of public workers’ contracts, and it determines expenditures, services and use of assets until the emergency is resolved.

Pontiac, Flint and Benton Harbor are under the control of emergency financial managers. In addition, EFMs are operating the school systems in Detroit, Highland Park and Muskegon Heights.

When the referendum on Public Act 4 was placed on the ballot, the state suspended the law until the election, revived Public Act 72 and reappointed Michigan’s EMs as emergency financial managers.

State officials say Public Act 72 will be reinstated if voters repeal Public Act 4, but that position is likely to face legal challenges.

Many cities and school districts have structural deficits. Municipalities are hurting, more than anything else, because of an almost universal decline in property tax revenue.

“You can’t go on spending more money than you take in … using smoke and mirrors to pretend the problem won’t go away,” Pontiac’s first Emergency Financial Manager Fred Leeb — appointed in 2009 — said. Leeb was followed by Michael Stampfler and then the city’s current emergency financial manager Louis Schimmel, who took over in Pontiac in September 2011.

Schimmel has helped Pontiac. He contracted with Waterford Township for fire protection and with the Oakland County Sheriff’s Department to patrol the city’s streets, dissolving the Pontiac Police Department.

Schimmel raised $55 million in a deal with the Oakland County Water Resources Commission that sold excess capacity in the city’s wastewater treatment system. That cash infusion eliminated the city’s short-term deficit, but the $55 million in bonds will still have to be paid back. However, Pontiac still faces a long-term structural deficit in the form of about $270 million in unfunded future pension and health care obligations.

The city has placed a question on the November ballot on whether to increase the city’s operating millage by 6.5-mills to bring revenues in line with expenditures.

Local officials and unions have vehemently protested state intervention. In Pontiac, the city council recently passed a resolution challenging the revival of Public Act 72, and Flint’s city council has made similar efforts.

While the awesome powers of an emergency manager strikes us as thwarting the people’s democratic rights to control their financial destiny, broad powers are needed until a long-term solution is found to pay for promised benefits to retired public employees.

There is no panacea for cities in deficit. Flint, for example, was appointed an emergency financial manager in 2002 and emerged from state control, only to fall back into receivership in 2011.

Perhaps EMs should be limited to a year or two in office to resolve a city’s financial woes. Meanwhile, Public Act 4 is a necessary evil. Without it, it’s likely many cities will face bankruptcy. A community’s fate being decided in court is far worse than an EM running the show.